All iPhones, iPads and Mac devices affected by 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre' bugs

Belinda Weber

"Analysis of these techniques revealed that while they are extremely hard to exploit, even by an app running locally on a Mac or iOS device, they can be potentially exploited in JavaScript running in a web browser", Apple said.

According to the BBC, Meltdown affects laptops, desktop computers and internet servers with Intel chips. However, Apple has advised its customers to download softwares only from trusted sources- Mac App Stores to help prevent any possible processor vulnerabilities.

The tech giant said it is working on software updates to fix a pair of vulnerabilities which affect Apple gadgets as well as "all modern processors and affect almost all computing devices and operating systems". Apple Watch is not affected by Meltdown. It may well be true that the average users will not see much of a difference on their home computer, but the impact of Meltdown and Spectre is much more widespread than that.

Companies scrambled yesterday (Jan. 3) to release patches for Windows and Android devices, with speculation mounting that the flaws, which apply to most modern processors, impacted Apple's devices, too.

Cloud administrations possessed by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google itself have additionally been utilizing Project Zero's examination to make and issue patches for their servers, while numerous other littler cloud suppliers who had not been beforehand told about the defect are now scrambling to fix their machines.

All iPhones, iPads and Mac computers are affected by Meltdown and Spectre bugs, Apple has told users of its devices.

The company says that it has already released "updates for the majority of processor products introduced within the past five years" in the form of firmware updates and software patches.

Besides, as per a report published on The guardian.com, Apple is also developing protections against the Spectre flaw for its Safari browser for iOS and macOS devices.

The Meltdown and Spectre issues take advantage of a modern CPU performance feature called speculative execution.

The bigger immediate threat from Spectre, Apple said, is in the Safari browser. "We proceed to create and test encourage alleviations for these issues and will discharge them in up and coming updates of iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS", the article states.

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